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Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Pathway to Peace

I was glad when they said to
me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

I was glad… I wonder how many
of us are really glad or joyful about our coming to church to worship God and, if
so, where this gladness might come from?

Looking back into the Jewish
traditions Psalm 122 is one of the Psalms of ascent. This means that it was one of the songs sung
by the people as they travelled to the Temple in
Jerusalem for
the holy festivals. The song was part of
their pilgrimage and their preparation as they anticipated their arrival. The songs of ascent reminded the people of
the context of their journey to be with God at the Temple.

This week we begin our own
pilgrimage. We begin the pilgrimage of Advent.
Advent is a time of waiting. It is a time of preparation. But what songs and what words give us the
context for our journey. This morning we
lit our first advent candle, the candle for hope. This then is the first marker which gives our
advent journey its context – we are waiting with hope.

So what are we waiting for
and what is our hope in? It would be
easy to fall into the trap to think that Advent is simply a time of waiting and
preparation for the celebrations surrounding Jesus birth. Now if you are like me you enjoy a good party
and the Christmas season usually offers some of the best. There are feasts and presents, with all the
joy on children’s faces, and family gatherings, and work parties, and trees
with decorations, and houses decked out in the joy of the season with flashing
lights.

In midst of our humdrum and
pedestrian existence facing the daily grind times like this lift our eyes to
wonder if there is something more. But
in and of themselves the celebrations, the carols, the lights on our houses,
the parties we go to offer nothing more than a moment of excitement in the
difficulties and boredom which confront us throughout life.

As Christians our hope is not
measured by the number of lights on our houses, or parties we get to go to, or
presents that we give or receive, or even carols we sing. Our hope is actually in something far deeper
and far greater: Jesus promise of the coming kingdom of God. As the true light of the world Jesus far
outshines the lights on our houses for his light directs us towards our home
with God, the coming kingdom, which is ultimately about the return of Christ.

So what does this kingdom
look like? Well in reality we cannot see
it clearly; we only have fleeting images and obscure ideas to hang our hope on
because, after all, faith is hope in things not
seen. Nonetheless, the prophet
Isaiah opens our eyes to some of the possibilities of this coming kingdom.

Firstly, he points to the
universal aspect to this coming kingdom.

In days to come

the mountain of the LORD’S
house

shall be established as the
highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the
hills;

all the nations shall stream
to it.

All of the nations will
stream to it. Isaiah prophesizes, that
God’s future for the nations is that they will be bound together as one. In this vision Isaiah opens up the promise of
God for all peoples and ultimately the whole universe. This is not a vision of the destruction of
the world but its remaking through God’s promise. It is a future grounded in peace.

they shall beat their swords
into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning
hooks;

nation shall not lift up
sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war
any more.

God’s future for the creation
is a future grounded in peace between all peoples. At a time in which our country has been
involved in war and in a time when there is so much political tension in our
world, from Iraq to Indonesia, from Pakistan to Zimbabwe, in the Ukraine and in
Tibet! Hope in the promise of a time of peace is unfathomable for us as human
beings but it remains one our deepest desires. The prayer of Psalm seeks its
answer to peace in the promise of a coming kingdom:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

“May they prosper who love
you.

Peace be within your walls,

and security within your
towers.”

For the sake of my relatives
and friends

I will say, “Peace be within
you.”

For the sake of the house of
the LORD our God,

I will seek your good.

Peace among all the nations
may seem to be impossibility for our human minds but this is a promise and hope
which far outshines any of our Christmas celebrations. Those of you have been alive for the
declaration of peace during the great wars of the last century may begin to
have an inkling of what joy that the realisation of this promise might bring.

So as Christians through Advent
we wait with hope for this coming kingdom. Paul writing to the Romans as well
as Jesus speaking to the disciples both encourages us to be alert and awake to
what this kingdom is about. Jesus warns
against complacency saying no one knows the time whilst Paul tells us to wake
from our sleep.

Sometimes we do no even
realise that we are asleep. The
constancy of life and the habits that we get into, and the days that drag by,
numb our hearts and minds to this promise of God. So it is, that we do find more excitement in
our Christmas parties and family gatherings than in the bigger picture of our
faith which is harder to hold on to and even harder to live out.

Yet this is what Paul
expected the Christians in Rome
and us to do, to live with the aroma of that coming dawn in our nostrils. We are to live putting on Jesus Christ. We are to live a life which is directed
towards our deeper hope and not, as Paul says, on the desires of the flesh. Living in the light of the coming kingdom,
representing that peace and reconciliation to the world, is not easy stuff to
do. But it is life transforming as we
are conformed, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to be a part of the coming
kingdom now and to know God more closely.

This means that as we journey
through Advent we are really reminding ourselves not simply that Jesus is about
to be born, and it is worth celebrating his birthday, but that Jesus birth
finds its meaning in his whole life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension
and the promise that he will come again.

Without the whole story the
birth is hollow indeed but in the context of the promise of the coming kingdom
the hope which we develop through advent is beyond any of the other hopes we
might have about our Christmas celebrations for 2004.

To return to where I began if
we start to understand these things and experience them then maybe our coming
to the house of the Lord may in be something that we are glad about.

I know myself that much of
the time church can simply be boring it becomes a chore, a discipline, a
habit. I think this is, in part, because
we begin to slumber, we tire of trying to remember the hope, and our hearts
struggle against the call of God within us.
But in moments of lucid revelation God comes into our lives to remind us
of this great gift of hope that we have.
God opens our eyes again to remind us of the future we are waiting
for. I personally believe the more we
come together to worship God and the more we engage in our spiritual journey
the more our hearts and minds are attuned to the bigger picture which
encompasses God’s purpose not just for ourselves but for all things. The song
that we sung earlier reminded us this fundamental conviction.

Sing to God, with joy and gladness

Hymns and psalms of gratitude.

With the voice of praise discover

That to worship God is good.

With the voice of praise discover that to worship God is
good. It is in our participation in
Christ’s worship of the Father that we discover that worshipping God is
good. This does not mean necessarily
mean ‘fun’ - good here means the right thing to do. Through the discipline of coming to the house
of the Lord we grow as the Lord fills us with new life and the knowledge of
salvation.

This Advent I encourage you
to prepare for Christ’s coming, to awaken as you glimpse the coming dawn, as
you savour a foretaste of the coming kingdom.
I encourage you to discipline yourself to look beyond the flashing
lights and the gifts we give one another to the light of the world, Jesus
Christ, who is God’s gift to us and the whole world. I encourage you to focus on the promise of
peace that has been given to us and to live your life in the light of the good
news of this coming kingdom.

Take a few moments now to
listen for how God might be speaking to you this day.